(Oh, how I miss CSPAN…even though it is slowly becoming mostly conservative views.)
Speaks his mind on President Obama using MLK’s bible to be sworn in. He has strong words about “using King’s fire” and not following up with actions, such as putting Wall St bankers in jail, putting Bush torturers in jail, getting rid of the drones, doing something about poverty...etc.
…because we’d much rather go after computer wizzes who have legal access to files and download them for the public so that the public knows what their government is doing…
link here.
bgrothus has this link in the comments section. Remember, folks, the derivatives were the cause of the meltdown. They were betting on people losing their mortgages….these scumbags were betting on people like me losing their houses.
…and not only betting on people losing their houses, but on people dying. It’s amazing how they can make it seem….normal. Just coldly predict how long someone lives and apply a monetary value to it, i.e., insurance $$.
(crap, I have to go, and I wanted to explore this more….argh)
…forcing children into slave labor to make Christmas decorations…
Note that the article states that child labor has pretty much ended in the United States….well, not exactly….
I’ve been reading this entry on barlett and steele’s website. It was written in 1996, and was so prophetic of what was happening and now we see the ripple effect. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like I was sleepwalking through the 80s and early 90s and am now Rip Van Winkle-ing–re-learning what was…
I was busy getting married, having babies, and going along with the babbling of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush years….well, maybe not W.’s years, but still…the country was being demolished, stick by stick…
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American made stuff (I haven’t purchased these items, so I can’t speak to their quality or the companies’ treatment of employees):
Here’s a site that encompasses many different products.
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A bright note here. I think it’s a good sign that small business owners are giving bonuses. Now if they could hire more people at living wages…
…are here in the Walmart, Sears, and others, supplier factory fire. It’s stunning that management was ordering the workers back to their stations as the factory was blazing. Absolutely stunning.
…so we can raise our own families….
It’s now too common that workers in stores are paid so little that they can’t even afford to shop in the store they work for…
I’ve had a friend who shopped at Walmart and when I raised concerns about how they treated their employees, she was upset because she couldn’t afford to shop anywhere else. I avoid it like the plague–only going there if no other option is available (i.e., I’m in another town or the item I want is not in what few independent stores are left).
Another person remarked about how a national chain grocery store that paid its employees a decent wage was “gouging them with high prices” when Walmart had so much lower prices…the national chain store eventually went out of business, naturally, so now they’re stuck with only Walmart to shop for groceries in their small town. Wanna take bets on how long that lasts–either they’ll raise prices with no competition or the folks in town will find yet another mega-store in a nearby town that has even lower prices so they’ll shop there, driving miles out of the way…buying more crap made out of China in sweatshops…God, this depresses me even writing it…
When is Congress going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $11.00 an hour? Oh, wait, we can’t do that…because that will…what are the excuses again…?
Congratulations, President Obama. Big Bird lives on…:)
I know better, but I was listening to the rightwing radio last night and they were painting a dim picture of Obama’s win. I turned it off and went to bed to read…thinking we were going to get Bush III…
Indiana voted in Mike do-nothing Pence for Governor, and now has a super majority in the legislature…<sigh>
…well, at least I am spared Richard my-sperm-is-a-gift-from-God Mourdock…
The news on the reaction in the Middle East. I hope this means a peaceful movement in Israel is underway….
DN! has this up on the elections. Elizabeth Warren is animated after her win. Thank God.
Unfortunately, the GMO lobby won and Californians defeated the measure requiring GMO labeling. Shit.
O”Reilly had a nice take on why Obama won–because people want “stuff” and Obama was going to give it to them…
Well, now…Romney has the gov’t pay $77,000 for the care and housing of his horse…has money in offshore accounts and John McCain has so many houses he can’t even remember how many he has…all because they don’t pay their fair share of taxes…now who feels entitled?
Is it entitlement when one wants to eat? Have a roof over their head? Get medical care? I’m confused.
They went on to talk about the shift away from the standard–now women and minorities are getting their voices heard. The boys of the old school are threatened…and it will probably get uglier before it’s all done.
To my sisters who were the power behind getting President Obama re-elected: Thank you. We can move mountains when we focus on what’s important to us and fight for it.
I want to say, though, that women have been characterized as of “one mind”–that any woman who manages to get before a microphone speaks for all women. They don’t.
This is one of the reasons that the middle-of-the-road women backed away from the Feminist Movement–they were treated as if they spoke for all women. Women who wanted to stay home with their children were characterized as dull twits who lacked ambition. Women who didn’t believe in abortion but believed in equality were marginalized, also.
And the 70s Feminists who fought against alimony because it…well, I’m not really sure why they were fighting against alimony…but as this quote by Barbara Seaman, amongst others, puts it quite well–this is something that I lost out on when I divorced. I also got less than half of the assets (with a mortgage to pay off) and my ex got away with only paying one-fifth ($20,000) of his income to support his three children. Although I had stayed home for eleven years, the judge did not allow for that, and had instead computed the amount of support as if I had a job!! Yes, I had a lousy lawyer–whose partner still smirks at me to this day whenever I have to trudge back to the place I grew up in…I’ve always wondered what that smirk means….
Anyway, I hope that with the election that women and minorities will do their homework, and support thoughtful politicians who approach the legislative process with the “Do unto others…” mindset…it would make life so much easier and just might bring about Peace…
I found this on the long relationship of Benjamin Netanyahu and Romney. So…Netanyahu appears to be part of the mindset of austerity measures, if what I’m reading between the lines is correct…
So, if we’re supposed to come running when they start bombing Iran…isn’t that asking government to interfere?
Doesn’t that go against the idea that gov’t should just get the hell out of our lives…?
Oh…I think I get it now…there’s a book out there on teenagers that goes something like “I hate you, Stay out of my life! But first, can you take me to the mall?”
Netanyahu is like a teenager…”Get out of my life, but can you bomb Iran first…?”
Adidas is not paying workers of a factory closed even though they have promised to adhere to a code of conduct.
After I became aware of the use of sweatshops for clothing, I started to deny my kids certain clothing they wanted because it was made in a country operating sweatshops. I recall yelling matches with one of my daughters because she couldn’t have the “cool” clothes these stores were selling.
At my university, there was a hunger-strike because the university was using sweatshops for its apparel. There was a lively discussion on it in one of the classes (a rare thing, believe me, because classes were set up to have lecture-only–rarely did we have meaningful discussions) –angry students were going to grill some steaks by the hunger-strikers. These folks had done nothing to them–they were protesting mistreatment to other human beings—so why would that anger them? Unbelievable.
I used to own several shirts with the university’s logo on it. I threw them out when I learned of the sweatshops. What still boggles me is when people find out that the chic clothing they’re wearing is made by someone earning a $1 per day, they merely shrug their shoulders and go on with their lives.
As it became harder and harder to buy non-sweatshop clothing, I thought I could just sew all my clothes, but when went to the fabric stores and looked at the place of manufacture–yep, you can guess it–China, Guatemala, etc. I couldn’t even buy fabric made in the U.S. to sew with.
Here’s a website of stuff still made in the U.S.A. I can’t make any claims to know about the fair wage practices of the manufacturers, so enter at your own risk.
Eagle 
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